For those readers of our blog who do not yet know about the Church Music Association of America, you may want to check out the website at www.musicasacra.com. For $30 annually, you can become a member and receive the excellent journal Sacred Music. The CMAA journal is actually the only journal I do read cover-to-cover, since all of the articles contained in each issue has specifically to do with our work as church musicians and choir directors. Plus, the CMAA meets yearly for its Sacred Music Colloquium, a week-long session of chant and polyphony study and discussion of "what's going on now" in the realm of sacred music. As a colloquium participant (full, active and conscious, of course), you will meet other directors of music, organists, and choral singers from around the nation (the world, too). Join the CMAA. Make your parish join CMAA. One Fatima Church parishioner read my report in the Diocesan newspaper about last summer's CMAA Colloquium at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. and became so excited to learn that chant and polyphony were still being studied and fostered for use at Mass, that she joined the CMAA as well as the choir!
4 comments:
I have also observed several UN-conscious participants at the CMAA annual colloquia...
Hahahahaha! Those are the same ones who try to predict where the vocalise is going before the pattern is revealed, or the ones who try to sing starting pitches without first listening what the starting pitch should be...generally, the unconscious ones, I observed, were the ones who are always unconscious, not only during Mass, but always...the ones who just stare at their morning bagel and communion with its aura. But that's going to be the case in most any group. Musicians are weird like that.
I love the "Sacred Music" journal. There were decades of back issues in the stacks of the St. Joseph's College (Indiana) library, and I thoroughly enjoyed surfing through them.
Haven't been to to a Colloquium yet, but maybe 2007 will be the year. Hope to see you snarky people there.
Some may not know that "Sacred Music" is what used to be "Caecilia". I got a few of those "Caecilia" books kicking around - mostly from the mid to late 1950's.
One issue covered Alex Peloquin and the once existing chant school in Providence.
Wow! Chant school! You guys got any of those kicking around? I don't mean those NPM cameo's or even CMAA colloquiums. I mean year-round chant schools.
BMP
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